It is time to ask ourselves how much of our lives are centered around comparison and wanting what other people have. What does that do to our lives?
We hear people say that comparison kills and stops comparing your life to others. When you walk into a bookstore or library and look in the self-help section, you will find millions of books about how comparison kills the joy in life. The authors of those books probably catch themselves comparing their lives to the lives of others as well. Whether television, media, or social media, the advertisers make money from us. They make money by having us compare ourselves and find that we are less than what we see on those media outlets. It may be the clothes, the houses, cars, jobs, vacations, or marriage; it is anything we can compare ourselves to.
When we compare ourselves, how does it make us feel? It tends to make us feel lesser than, down, behind the eight ball. We may feel very unfulfilled in our lives. We may also find ourselves working hard to get to the next level. However, unfortunately, the next level often fluctuates because we may not find happiness in what we have, and we keep wanting to get what someone else has. As we do this, we still feel lesser than and feel like we cannot compete.
How do we begin to stop comparison and see what is happening in our own lives?
The first thing we can do is ask ourselves when we want something, whether it’s a car, house, or vacation if it will make our lives any better.
The second thing is to ask ourselves, is advertising, television, or social media making us want to have certain things? Is it an outside source that is telling us that we need to have more? This makes it easier because we are then able to realize it’s not just us intrinsically finding that we are lesser than others but realizing that companies want us to feel that way. This allows them to sell their product or service to all of us.
Last but not least, when we are feeling down, we need to realize that we have a lot going for ourselves. We must find gratitude in what we already have. An interesting caveat to life is that if we want to get better or we want to get more and we want it to last, we have to find true gratitude and respect for what we already have. Without this, we really can’t move up because we keep going for something that doesn’t exist. We are always looking for a bigger, better deal when, in reality, what we have is a nice deal.
Once we realize what we have in our own lives, we are grateful for it daily; then we can move up in our lives. Not only can we make this upward move, it will be lasting. We will be able to identify when we are being sold a bill of goods that is not intrinsically coming from our mind.
